Sometime’s PR stunts can go wrong, backfire or just generally fall flat on their face – this is nothing new. But what does it really mean for a PR stunt to go wrong? Well whatever it did mean is no more because Ubisoft have redefined what it means for a PR stunt to go wrong. Media employees in tears and the calling in of the Australian New South Wales bomb squad was the result of Ubisofts most recent PR stunt. It started with Ubisoft sending out a “suspicious package” to Ninemsn employees at the Australia Square building in Sydney accompanied by a note stating “check your voicemail”. The package was actually harmless and simply contained a copy of the Watch Dogs game and some merchandise and the package it arrived in was just supposed to be a novel way of presenting the new game to the media company in question. There was of course no voicemail, which was a blunder on behalf of Ubisoft PR, and to top things off the box started making strange noises. This lead to the police being called, the arrival of a bomb disposal unit and all staff being evacuated and sent home by 3pm. The journalist who was supposed to receive the package ended up in tears. Apparently Ubisoft or any of its agencies did not reach out to Ninemsn to inform them the package was coming beforehand, even though they had planned to as part of the stunt. Ubisoft commented on the PR car-crash stating that:

“As part of a themed promotion for Watch Dogs, our team in Australia sent voicemail messages to some local media alerting them that they’d receive a special package related to the game. Unfortunately, the delivery to Ninemsn didn’t go as planned, and we unreservedly apologise to Ninemsn’s staff for the mistake and for any problems caused as a result. We will take additional precautions in the future to ensure this kind of situation doesn’t happen again.”

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